Jane the Grabber

Jane the Grabber A Pat O’Malley Historical Mystery JIM MUSGRAVE Copyright © 2013 Jim Musgrave All rights reserved. ISBN: 1491096381 ISBN-13: 978-1491096383 Other works by Jim Musgrave Forevermore: A Pat O’Malley Historical Mystery Disappearance at Mount Sinai: A Pat O’Malley Historical Mystery The Digital Scribe: A Writer’s Guide to Electronic Media Lucifer’s Wedding Sins of Darkness Russian Wolves Iron Maiden an Alternate History The Necromancers or Love Zombies of San Diego Freak Story: 1967-1969 The President’s Parasite and Other Stories The Mayan Magician and Other Stories Catalina Ghost Stories DEDICATION To readers everywhere. May you be well and prosper. CONTENTS Acknowledgments i P Prologue White Slavery 1 1 Free Thinking and Animal Magnetism 11 2 Missus Mergenthaler’s Charity 26 3 The Women’s Civil War 41 4 Child’s Play 56 5 A Kind of Wonderland 71 6 Two Visits 86 7 Another Trap 102 8 The Last Taboo 117 9 The Offers 132 10 Taijitu 147 11 The Public 160 12 E The Devices 175 American Museum of Oddities 191 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Internet proves to be a valuable tool to me in my research, especially as it pertains to the word use of the mid-Nineteenth Century. Thanks to the Google Ngram Viewer, I was able to use the appropriate words for the appropriate time and place. I also want to acknowledge my book’s cover designer, Graphicz X Designs for my great cover. If it lures you inside the book, then he did his job well! My wife, Ellen, was the editor and my life’s companion. Jennifer “The Sorceress” Perry, my publicist, has made it quite easy to change genres into the Steampunk mode. There’s a lot of excitement in this creative journey, and I look forward to working in it. i As the Bhagavad-Gita summarized the human quandary: "Thinking of sense-objects, man becomes attached thereto. From attachments longing and from longing anger is born. From anger arises delusion; from delusion, loss of memory is caused. From loss of memory, the discriminative faculty is ruined and from the ruin of discrimination, he perishes." PROLOGUE WHITE SLAVERY Boston, Massachusetts, April, 1868 ohn Allen and his wife Susie had a simple method to J procure young women. As a former religious student, John knew that the churches attracted many people who were previously “full of sin” and who now needed to become “cleansed in the way of the Lord.” The young women were no exception, as the parents used the Christian faith as a method of inoculating their sons and daughters against the temptations of the devil. John and Susie were well aware of these temptations, as these enticements had formed the bedrock upon which they had built their entire lives in New York City. Waiting outside the newly erected Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street, John and Susie were staring up at the gigantic Gothic steeple. They each wore the Sunday dress of the cultured elite. He was in his blue suit with matching waistcoat, vest and white straw hat. She was wearing a hooped dress of crimson red taffeta and many petticoats beneath, and her outfit was completed with a red parasol and what John liked to call her “fire engine 1 JANE THE GRABBER bonnet.” Each layer of the church’s steeple progressed upward, as if it were assembled to rule the sky. The pointed top had the tiny cross of Jesus--without the Catholic martyred body--firmly ensconced, like a lightning rod for God. Susie chuckled and asked, “You figure these church- goers believe they’re in a house of God because it’s so high?” John looked down at his little wife, as he was over six feet and four inches in height, and she was a tiny lady of five feet and one inch. “It was made to rise above the Bunker Hill Monument. It is the purpose of these so-called men of God to always be one step ahead of the state or the king, whichever ruling elite is in charge at the time. For they understand that the only power they possess over these elite is death. Even the rich must die, as Shakespeare knew so well. To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub. Since the rich and powerful must control both their own futures in the hereafter and those of their subjects, the church intrudes itself in the role of the shaman or ‘keeper of ecstasy.’ I am now a keeper of the authentic ecstatic experience, and we are here to offer it to these young women.” The married couple from New York City watched as the young women broke away from their parents and ran down the grass embankment toward them. Their hair flowed in the wind like silken strands of glory, their Sunday bonnets bobbing on their backs, their long stockings stretching with each long stride they made. John saw one that looked like a prospect. She was not running wild with the freedom of being released from the Lord; no, she was carefully wending her way down the proper beaten path, looking all around her at the burgeoning springtime. He watched as she stopped to 2 JANE THE GRABBER bend daintily over to pick a wild flower. She held it up to the sun, watching its blazing light penetrate the fragile softness of the flower’s petals. She squinted at the flower, twirling it around and around between two fingers and thumb, finally stopping this twisting to begin plucking the petals with her other hand. John watched her red lips move as she severed the petal from the central golden source of the bloom. His lips moved with hers as he whispered, “He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not.” John Allen motioned to his wife to follow closely behind him. He then began to walk toward the young woman, who had completed her chore and was now standing still, watching the approach of these two strangers with vague curiosity. “Oh, Miss! Do you have a moment?” John cried, beginning to pick-up his pace as he came closer to this young lady. She was wearing a black dress with satin borders, and she had the sadness of one who knew death at an early age. But her face was bright and curious, and John knew her kind of beauty was world-weary and in the need of a change. The girl shook her hair when she spoke, and the auburn bangs on her round forehead flew backward like a horse that was rearing up to attack. “What is it?” she asked. The adolescent impatience in her tone was there, like all of these girls, and it was just the manner he thrived on. “I’m so sorry, but my wife and I were looking for the theater district. Do you happen to know how we can get there from these parts?” The girl’s eyes grew wide. “Theater? Are you from the theater?” she asked. “Why, how did you guess? My name is Doctor Alberto 3 JANE THE GRABBER Rubio, and I direct in the Palace Theater of New York City. My wife, who is our theater’s manager, and myself are here to look for new talent. We like to visit the local theaters and talk with the staff. The new season is coming soon, and we need actresses to perform.” John accented the word “perform” by pronouncing it “per-fahm.” “Actresses? Why, I’ve acted in several of my school’s productions! I was Beatrice in Seven Sisters just last year.” John knew he had planted the hook deep within her psyche. “I couldn’t help but notice, my dear, your dress is funereal. Has there been a tragedy in your life?” The girl swept her white hands over the front of her black dress and looked down at her shoes. She then slowly raised her head and considered his face. “My father passed. He was all I had. But I have a boyfriend, Jeffrey,” she stammered, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. Little Susie moved over to put her arm around the girl’s shoulders in mock sympathy. “Don’t you have anybody to look after you, dear? What’s your name? How old are you?” “Irene Sanders. I am sixteen. My Aunt Margaret has taken me in, but I don’t like her. She never lets me go out with friends, and I have to do all the chores.” John knew it was time to present the bait. He took out the glossy playbill from the Palace Theater. It was, of course, all fictional, but it looked impressive, especially to a young lady from the farmland outside Boston. The print said, “Palace Theater, New York City is auditioning for the coming season. Ingénues are preferred, and experience is appreciated.” “What’s an Ingénue?” the girl asked. “It’s a character we need,” said John. “She is the innocent girl from the country who falls in love with the dashing young city boy. He falls in love with her and 4 JANE THE GRABBER teaches her all about how to become a sophisticated young woman in the heart of the throbbing metropolitan excitement.” “I could do that!” Irene said. “I can sing, and I can even dance! Will there be musicals?” The girl’s gray eyes were sparkling with expectant joy. “Is your aunt waiting for you up there?” Little Susie asked, looking up the hill toward the church.

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